Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Just-So Darwinism

[UPDATE below.]

I am not claiming in this brief post that "evolution is bunk" or that the Genesis account is the literal history of the six days of creation. What I am saying is that you will never find such open-ended, anything-goes theorizing in any scientific field other than evolutionary biology.

Consider this article (HT2LRC) on why we bald men are actually very attractive to young women:

Although many scholars have tried to identify a useful function for human hairlessness, they have failed. Indeed Alfred Wallace, the biologist who jointly described evolution with Darwin, concluded that our hairlessness proved the existence of God. Only a supernatural being, unconcerned with natural selection, could have designed it.

But Darwin showed that hairlessness was proof of a different type of evolution, not by natural selection but by sexual selection. Under natural selection, individuals survive if they are adapted to their environments: a brown bear, being conspicuous, would not last long in the Arctic, so it evolves into a polar bear. Sexual selection is not concerned with the environment but with sex: individuals breed only if they find a mate, so animals have to attract one. Consider the peacock.

OK so already we're in trouble. The guy is going to use the example of a peacock's plumage to prove why we lost our hair. (!!)

If that were the end of the story, I might say some wise aleck remark like, "If the guy were trying to explain why women had such lush manes, compared to the meager covering of the males, then it might make sense to bring up the peacock." But I can't go that route, because the "scientific Darwinian" story gets even more convoluted:

We human beings, too, are highly selected sexually, but in our case it is women who are the peacocks: the more beautiful they are, the greater the number and quality of the men who court them. This is why, some 75,000 years ago, we made our last two evolutionary advances: we lost our body hair and we invented art....

Art and hairlessness co-evolved because they fed off each other. The girl whose skin was least hairy could paint it, tattoo it, decorate it and clothe it more adventurously than could her furry sisters. So she got more and better men. And in consequence her children - even the males, though to a lesser degree - lost their hair too. We had become the naked ape.

OK, you got that? Remember, the whole point of this story is to explain why older men with thinning hair are actually attractive to young women (despite the myths that Rogaine and others would have you believe, and despite all those male models with full heads of hair). So to do that, the story starts out with why evolution made women lose their (body) hair, which then caused their male offspring to lose their (body and scalp?) hair, even though the original motivation (sexual selection a la the peacock) never caused female baldness to become prevalent.

To repeat, I am not saying the above story is impossible. What I am saying is that the exact opposite outcome--namely, a trend of female baldness and men with much thicker hair--would have been a far more natural fit to the proferred Darwinian mechanism.

You see this all the time in pop evolutionary biological accounts, where a plausible Darwinian story is deployed when it just as easily (indeed, often more easily) could have been deployed to fit the reverse set of facts. And a lot of the people who lap this stuff up, would be the first to denounce the non-falsifiability of unscientific Intelligent Design stories.

Sexual selection is the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card for Darwinian theories. "What, that feature makes absolutely no sense and could only hurt the survival fitness of a creature? Well, the females must be turned on by vulnerability. You've seen Beaches right?"

UPDATE: OK I went back and re-read the article, and it seems that maybe the guy just took 85% of his space to discuss something completely irrelevant to male pattern baldness. In other words, he might have been offering the above story just to motivate the connection between human hair and sexual selection. When it comes to male pattern baldness, here is the scientific hypothesis:

Men have evolved to attract women. Because only some men go bald, we must assume that different women are attracted differently. Some women will be attracted to young men, but young men are untried and therefore risky, so some women will seek sugar daddies instead. Mating with sugar daddies invokes a different set of risks but the trophy wife is nonetheless making a rational choice - one that may well have been rewarded preferentially in the Stone Age - to which she is in part guided by baldness in her man.

Ah OK, we "explain" male pattern baldness as a response to sexual selection pressures. So why haven't all men gone bald? Ah, we "must assume that different women are attracted differently." Apparently conditions in one part of the African savannah favored sugar daddies, but in another part there were trees that yielded giant coconuts to the guys with full heads of hair and who knew how to dance really well.

I'm so glad we have abandoned faith and superstition, and now embrace Reason and Science.

You tend to find more of this "just so" business in evolutionary psychology, a rather soft field, than in evolutionary biology. That isn't to say that it's completely absent from evolutionary biology, but evol. biologists do seem to be a bit more skeptical and rigorous when it comes to such mushy theorizing.

I'm a Christian but not a biblical literalist, so I don't really have a problem with evolution. But I understand and respect your position. And I would say that I share some of your attitude when I see some of the scientists and regular folk who claim to be proud atheists or non-theists, yet seem to have replaced the Christianity of their ancestors with a kind of militant Darwinism.

Didn't read the full article, but this does sound contrived. There are actually much easier ways to explain Male Pattern Baldness that are less contrived.

First, there is the fact that MPB typically occurs *after* mating happens, especially in the past when people got married/had children at a much earlier age than they do now. So, in this case, MPB is just not selected *against* - you don't need to explain why it is selected *for*. This is similar to possible explanations for any number of deleterious diseases that happen in old age *after* progeny are born.

Second, if art were developed around the time of hairlessness, then I would also assume that things like clothing and shelter were fairly advanced at that time. Unlike the animal kingdom, we don't need hair to keep warm because we can use the hair and fibers found in nature to fashion "unnatural" coats to keep us warm.

Such theorizing is fun, but it is just correlation and a logic puzzle. I'm sure there are other explanations of MPB as well - some more contrived, some less. In the everyday world of the biology lab, evolutionary theories help explain what we see in more predictable ways, so it serves a function. As an imperfect analogy, Classical Physics serves a function even though Quantum Physics is more accurate.

I think you're trying too hard to find faults. All that is is someone trying to come up with theories as to why X is a certain way. He may be wrong. Science IS making theories and trying to prove them wrong. There is no absolute truth in science just the removal of the false. False merely being that which is not consistent, reproducible, predictable. And all those people with crazy ideas that turn out to be wrong add to the knowledge base. It's all useful.

That's all science is. Scientists (aka humans) mess up the process by becoming attached to their theories. The prefix "as of now, based on my currently obtained evidence, I believe" is lost often and that's a major problem. It requires all of us to snap others out of their intellectual comfort zone and make them justify their position.

Currently biology is of a complexity that we are unable to fully grasp or model. Like economics there are too many variables to account for. Even in the future when there is better understanding of how the parts work and work together looking back into the past to explain things will be no more accurate then economics. You will never be able to know or track all the variables. Even if you somehow could you'd effect the outcome.

"Second, if art were developed around the time of hairlessness, then I would also assume that things like clothing and shelter were fairly advanced at that time."

Or humans lived somewhere where it was warm? (I would think it's not that we lost our hair because we had clothing and so didn't need it, but that we lost our hair and then needed to develop clothing when we began to move out of East Africa.)

I don't know how versed the author of the article is in biology -- I'm certainly not -- but I'm pretty sure the respected theory for many years now for the peacock's distinct plumage is a case of signaling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_game . It indicates that even with such costly vestment attached to it (very visible to predators), the bird still manages to survive and is in good health. If such a system didn't come about, then you'd have a lemon market, or an adverse selection situation where birds easy to produce (the ones that required the least resources for parents to be ready to go off to the market) would spring off, not the high quality ones.

Sexual selections theories for ornaments are not usually considered very convincing, but if the feature is cost free, it's possible some unusual noise towards a given feature shared by a few females, self-reinforces itself developing a chain reaction as the females that are attracted to such males have exponential more descendants. See the sexy son hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_son_hypothesis

While I don't think any of these criticisms suffice to throw out the general Darwinian theory of natural selection, I agree that there is a disturbing tendency to use the theory to explain both a phenomenon and its opposite. (A theory that can explain anything explains nothing, etc etc)

I actually made a long rant on my secret youtube page about another example: there were two separate peer-reviewed journal articles that came out around the same time. One found that women dress more provocatively during the fertile parts of their cycles. The other found that women walk *less* provocatively during the fertile parts of their cycles.

No, the problem is that both articles claimed that their observations were *directly implied* by the modern synthesis. So in other words, the theory can be read to mean two basically opposite things.

Another problem I have is with the general "peacocking theory". It basically tries to explain burdensome features by saying, "What the creature loses in survival ability, it gains in being able to send stronger fitness signals to the opposite sex."

In other words, "Yeah, any old bird can survive in the forest. But look at me: I can survive *even* with this giant tail dragging me down! I *must* be fit."

And there's actually something to these explanations: they've been used to explain the "ghetto caddy" phenomenon.

The problem, of course, is that once you permit such explanations, your theory permits everything, because every feature necessarily fits into one of the following categories:

1) It improves the organism's capabilities.2) It hurts the organism's capabilities, thereby making its current survival into stronger evidence of its fitness for the opposite sex.

So yes, it allows you "explain" why there are brown-colored bears in polar regions because, "Hey, female polar bears are attracted to brown bears, because they're so good at hunting even when the prey sees them from a mile away!"

You know, except that there aren't any such bears.

Again, this doesn't mean throw out everything discovred after Darwin. But it does mean that evolutionary biology, in practice, is often used VERY unscientifically.

Quote: "What I am saying is that you will never find such open-ended, anything-goes theorizing in any scientific field other than evolutionary biology"

Except, for maybe, economics...

Quote:"I'm so glad we have abandoned faith and superstition, and now embrace Reason and Science."

A newspaper editorial by a university chancellor can hardly be held up as the representative for Reason and Science.

Shall I post examples of people using religion to justify all kinds of absurd or even downright evil things? This silly argument thing is a two way road, and I think most of the traffic is coming from the other direction, Bob.

Maybe baldness is a 'spangle'? It is apparently linked to high testosterone levels, the evolutionary benefits of which are quite obvious in young people, but are rather irrelevant in older people.

Considering that humans - until about 100 years ago - rarely lived for more than 40 years or so, there is probably no point discussing the evolutionary advantages or disadvantages of anything that only manifests itself in our thirties or forties.

Baldness is a byproduct of aging, just like wrinkles.

That being said, cultural selection has probably contributed to the emergence of a whole host of strange phenomena in humans, such as blue eyes, fatty bottoms, and most other 'racial' features.

Alternatively, of course, everything is just the way it is because god wanted it so. Makes sense.

"Shall I post examples of people using religion to justify all kinds of absurd or even downright evil things? This silly argument thing is a two way road, and I think most of the traffic is coming from the other direction, Bob."

The topic isn't religion, Greg. Don't change it because you can't address the topic at hand.

Considering that humans - until about 100 years ago - rarely lived for more than 40 years or so, there is probably no point discussing the evolutionary advantages or disadvantages of anything that only manifests itself in our thirties or forties.

Anyone doing genealogy research can tell you that "rarely" in this paragraph should be changed to "usually". Low life expectancy is generally caused by high infant mortality rates. A person that survives the first few years is likely to live a long life, barring war and disease. It's not uncommon to find people living into their 70s and more, even during the 1600s in fledgling American colonies.

I think most people got what my point was with this post. Just to clarify, I was not saying Darwin was wrong. Rather, I am saying that if a theory "predicts" two opposite things, then it's a bit vacuous.

Silas wrote:there were two separate peer-reviewed journal articles that came out around the same time. One found that women dress more provocatively during the fertile parts of their cycles. The other found that women walk *less* provocatively during the fertile parts of their cycles.

Anyway, here's my fundamental complaint against the standard exposition of sexual selection: It doesn't account for the fact that the offspring are going to be loaded down with the costly signal as well. So a female seeing a male with vulnerable balls will think, "Wow, he's been able to hunt all this time even though a swift kick to the groin would mean curtains. He must be agile!"

But if she sees a male with retracted testes, she will think, "Hmm, he's probably not as agile as the first guy, but then again he doesn't need to be."

In other words, the total information she has is, "Both of these potential mates have survived so far."

I grant you, in specific cases depending on non-linearity in "cost functions" blah blah blah, you could come up with a model in which the evolutionarily stable equilibrium has really strong males squandering some of their surplus in signalling. I'm just pointing out that the standard exposition--even in college-level biology textbooks--doesn't take it that far.

@HHS - To be fair, Bob made a snarky comment about abandoning faith for reason, immediately after a pretty dubious example of "reason". So *I* didn't introduce religion to change the topic. I merely pointed out that I can write this exact same type of post from another perspective and conclude that people can use the bible to support all kinds of "theories" that are far easier to explain using evolutionary biology. Take the matter of fossil record for example. My 10 year old nephew was telling me the other day that the devil put those there to confuse us...

His point, I think, is that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem becomes a nail...but you see this everywhere. Keynesians only have a money press, the government only has guns, darwinists have natural selection, and creationists have bibles. I disagree with his opening paragraph then, where he attributes this tunnel vision as being particularly extraordinary in evolutionary biology.

Silas:"The problem, of course, is that once you permit such explanations, your theory permits everything, because every feature necessarily fits into one of the following categories:

1) It improves the organism's capabilities.2) It hurts the organism's capabilities, thereby making its current survival into stronger evidence of its fitness for the opposite sex."

While I see your point Silas (same point Bob was making, I think), you are not entirely correct. There are features that don't fit into either category, so there is still room for a null hypothesis. Any feature that hurts an animal's survival and is not easily apparent could not be explained either way. For example growing an extra internal organ that isn't used would not signal to a mate that you have extra resources or are strong because a mate could not detect it. It is only a fairy small subset of "harmful" adaptations that could be explained as signaling mechanisms.

Silas: Some features are neither here nor there, they simply exist because they have not been eliminated by evolution, or because they are neutral - such as five fingers instead of four or six or seven. Wouldn't really make a difference which number it is.

Also, it is perfectly possible that some current living beings have detrimental features, if only because the environment that once necessitated them no longer exists. The defense mechanism of the hedgehog comes to mind.

"Some features are neither here nor there, they simply exist because they have not been eliminated by evolution, or because they are neutral - such as five fingers instead of four or six or seven. Wouldn't really make a difference which number it is."

This is possible -- but it's certainly not a scientific answer in the traditional sense. Think of physicists answering a question about gravity by answering, "Hey, some things just do rise and others just happen to fall!"

@NOTAL: you are not entirely correct. There are features that don't fit into either category, so there is still room for a null hypothesis. Any feature that hurts an animal's survival and is not easily apparent could not be explained either way. For example growing an extra internal organ that isn't used would not signal to a mate that you have extra resources or are strong because a mate could not detect it.[lb]

But that's not true either. The very same theory of evolution claims that the ability to detect such handicaps would be selected for. Observability of a feature is not a free variable (or it's endogenous, or whatever the term is). Humans don't detect cat mating scents, cat's don't detect human sexiness.

So a useless internal organ could indeed be explained by sexual selection. Either:

a) The organism must gather more food (energy) to satisfy it, orb) The organism gathers the same energy but uses less energy for its other systems, and thus has to do all of its tasks more efficiently.

Either way, it's observable to others, and the ability to notice "wow, that guy hunts a lot" or "wow, look how little that guy has to move to catch prey" would be selected for.

At best, the theory of evolution + sexual selection/"peacocking" theory would only be able to rule out very trivial cases.

The part that bothers me is that they try to make it looks scientific by restating the above tautology as an equation. "d(S+C)/dt > 0, where S is signaling value, and C is capability value". How do you calculate S? How do you calculate C? "Um, you don't, you just know it's always met."

Gene - unlike gravity, evolution deals with living things. And it is therefore not possible to explain things with the same certainty as in Newtonian physics.

Much of the explanations advanced by evolutionists are by necessary speculative - not "this is how it is", but "this is how it could be".

Much of evolution theory is like history: we know there was a mechanism of some kind that brought about what we are looking at, but we may never now for sure what this mechanism was in any great detail. So, we speculate. Just like historians.

Why is Eastern Europe backward? Because, among other things, it never suffered the plague to the same extent as Central Europe. That cannot be proven, but it's a reasonbaly sound explanation. You can quibble with it, and advance a more persuasive one. And as long as your argument doesn't boil down to "The Flying Spaghetty Monster wanted it so", you are engaged in what most scientists would recognize as a reasonably legitimate discourse.

The problem with many evangelical Christians is that they think because some scientific hypothesis is silly, science as an institution has failed. What they fail to recognize that unlike religion, science allows for debate - provided you base it on at least some evidence, and a lot of theory.

On second thought, I actually do think that saying "well, some things just happen to do this, while others just happen to do that" is a perfectly legitimate way of saying "I haven't got a frigging clue - you tell me". Scientists do that all the time - at least the once I talk to. In no way do they mean to say that this is the last word on it; the whole point is that they acknowledge there is a gap that needs filling. By somebody with more time and inclination to deal with it.

@James_Rothfield: On second thought, I actually do think that saying "well, some things just happen to do this, while others just happen to do that" is a perfectly legitimate way of saying "I haven't got a frigging clue - you tell me". Scientists do that all the time - at least the once I talk to. In no way do they mean to say that this is the last word on it; the whole point is that they acknowledge there is a gap that needs filling. By somebody with more time and inclination to deal with it. [lb]

It's perfectly fine for a scientist to say, "Either X or not-X could happen; that phenomenon is independent of the postulates of this theory as it stands."

But that's not what's happening here.

In the cases I listed, they're saying "Evolution necessarily implies that women will try to provoke suitors when fertile" AND "Evolution necessarily implies that women will try not to provoke suitors when fertile."

And lying on top of that is the problem that anyone who points out such unscientific reasoning within evolutionary theory is assumed to be rejecting all of modern biology.

"Much of evolution theory is like history: we know there was a mechanism of some kind that brought about what we are looking at, but we may never now for sure what this mechanism was in any great detail. So, we speculate. Just like historians."

Well, James, I have published (or have accepted with a promise to publish) a number of papers on the philosophy of history that argue that history is not about "mechanisms" at all, and that history is not concerned with "speculation" but with what the evidence compels historians to believe. (Of course, new evidence may emerge that prompts a new belief, but that still doesn't reduce history to speculation.)

Gene - I see what you mean, but maybe I was being imprecise: what I meant is this: historians base their entire system of analysis on the assumption that historic events are driven by human decision making, and that humans act in a certain manner. They do not believe that humans are mere puppets on the string guided by some higher intelligence. History follows the logic of human action - even historians who have never read von Mises would probably agree to that.

But, since we are not privy to the exact mental processes that made humans make decisions in the past, we are left with fragmentary evidence, with pieces of data here and there, and with outcomes. In order to explain the outcomes, we have to fill the gaps between the pieces of evidence with speculation, hypothesizing, and theory building. History is not an exact science, and it is far from purely empirical (not to mention the fact that in order to make sense of evidence, we have to have some theoretical framework to begin with).

Evolution theory is no different: we assume that biological developments are NOT guided by some intelligence, and that they are NOT in the least random, but that they are driven by the logic of evolution. We have some evidence, such as the approximate time at which a certain mutation became permanently part of the gene pool. What we do not know with any great certainty is why a particular mutation became dominant, as opposed to conceivable alternatives. Some explanations are silly, some are convincing, and some may even be true.

Silas, you're not making any sense. Here's an article that explains the 'unsexy walking' of fertile women: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Woman-039-s-Sexy-Swung-Gait-Does-Not-Correlate-With-Her-Sex-Drive-71913.shtml

Basically, it says that when most fertile, women stop the most obvious sign of their fertility advertising their fertility order to prevent sexual assault. Dressing more provocatively is more subtle than swinging your hips around town. As more evidence of the subtleties of fertile women, consult this study here: http://www.unm.edu/~gfmiller/cycle_effects_on_tips.pdf

That's a study that follows strippers throughout their cycle and the tips they get. The study found that strippers make the most tips when most fertile. And in case you weren't aware, stripping is a very intimate activity.

In closing, evolutionary psychology is a relatively new field, and as such, may occasionally provide seemingly contrary evidence. This is ok, as we will understand more in time. It's ok to debate certain research, but to write off the entire field is a bit silly.

OK, I think you are wrong about "theory and history," just as Mises was -- see my paper "Ideal Types and the Historical Method" in Collingwood and British Idealism Studies for why. But, in any case, let's say we found these "historical" explanations in a text:

1) If you missed the several times where I specifically said I was NOT writing off the entire field, then you must have barely skimmed my posts.

2) You also missed the point I was making. The problem is not the contradictory results. The problem is in a theory being so vague that two groups of people using it can come to opposite conclusions about what it implies for their observations.

Group A: "Obviously, the theory of evolution implies that nature would select for women who conceal attractiveness when fertile, and that's why we see them automatically doing so."

Group B: "Obviously, the theory of evolution implies that nature would select for women who amplify their attractiveness when fertile, and that's why we see them automatically doing so."

The problem (for the fourth time) is NOT that they found some women amplifying attractiveness and some attenuating it when fertile. The problem is that the theory allows you to prove why both of them must be the only ones that happen.

* Of course there are idiotic Christians who say ridiculous things on evolution (and other matters). But it is a matter of hypocrisy. The in-your-face Darwinists are so proud of how scientific and falsifiable their views are, in contrast to the anti-science ID-ers. For an analogy, when a Christian preacher gets caught cheating on his wife, it is perfectly fine for people to go nuts. It would be silly for his defenders to say, "Oh yeah? Shall I list how many atheists are philanderers? Are you sure you want to go there?"

* I am NOT saying evolution is wrong. I am pointing out--and Silas and I are in eerie agreement on this one--that it is hilarious when they use an evolutionary explanation to deal with observation A, when that same explanation could just as well have dealt with not-A.

Yes and no. I would first of all quibble about the use of definite language regarding advantage - it would be better to say that Caesar thought it was to his advantage to do so, while Pompey thought it would be to his advantage not to do so. However, there is nothing in principle to suggest that both statements cannot be true. In that sense, they can both be fine history - though not very satisfactory ones. It would be far more satisfactory to start speculating on why either one thought what they did - and regardless how much evidence one digs up for the argument, they are, in the end, merely speculation. After all, maybe Caesar had his doubts about the wisdom of crossing the Rubicon, but did so anyway because he felt particularly ebullient that morning and said to himself: "Sod it, I'm Caesar, dammit. It's now or never". Turned out it kind of worked out for him. We never now whether Pompey would have been better off had he shown less restraint. But, one thing is for sure - in neither case did an angel from above come down and make them do, or refrain from, it.

Our understanding of what made Caesar do it may be faulty, but our assumptions on what makes humans work - and hence history work - are the best we have.

Humans acting in what they at the moment perceive to be in their best interest - defined according to their own standards - is as much as a fact of history and social, as the mechanism of evolution is a fact of biology.

Will we always be able to figure out the truth because we know these facts? No. However, we can at the very least rule out certain explanations, such as divine intervention. That's the beauty of evolutionary theory - it allows us to dramatically narrow down the range of possible explanations.

Let's start from the beginning. The modern synthesis, as simply as I can put it, is: that genetic variation arises through random mutation, which causes gradual changes in populations through genetic drift and natural selection. This is important, because when people go about talking about "Darwinists" they forget to take into account that the current synthesis places heavy weight on genetic drift, which was completely unknown to Darwin. To find a more thorough explanation, see here http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/modern-synthesis.html

Now, onto your point. You said that you weren't talking about finding "contradictory results" using the theory, but rather blaming the "vagueness" of it to get "opposite conclusions" from the same theory. Ok, fine. Neither of your examples once mention the impact of evolutionary synthesis on their findings. That's because allele frequencies don't have a lot to do with behavioural observations or societal interactions. Neither of the articles claim that their findings are directly implied by the synthesis. And here is the actual published research: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/dress_to_impress.pdf

http://www.femininebeauty.info/f/gait.menstrual.cycle.pdf

So your whole argument about them claiming direct implications from the modern synthesis, thus showing how the theory can be read to answer "opposite" results, is out-right wrong. The papers talk about other theories in their field, especially concerning signs of fertility in women.

Also, Bob, I don't think I quite see the hypocrisy in your first clarification. Are you saying it's hypocritical of a "Darwinist" to condemn in-your-face religious people, when they can be in-your-face about the falsifiability of science?

Interesting discussion, guys. Even as a young-earth creationist, I would argue that the "just-so" stories about evolution are not presented as proof, but guesses about what happened after the assumption of the truth of evolution. No creationist takes them seriously because of that. Still they are fun to read. We have noticed for decades that evolution can explain everything and its opposite.

Just out of curiousity, how many of you guys have ever read a book by a creation scientist? Also, does anyone know the differences between Intelligent Design and Creation Science? Just a hint, they are very different.

"Also, does anyone know the differences between Intelligent Design and Creation Science? Just a hint, they are very different."

Yes, I understood this pretty well. Intelligent Design is at least a serious effort to be scientific. Creation "Science" makes no such pretense at all. It's "practitioners" lie about the content of well-established sciences and make fools of Christians by their monumental display of self-imposed ignorance. They ignore the advice Augustine gave Christians 1600 years ago not to take Genesis 'too literally,' and in their over-weening pride and desire to elevate themselves as 'more Christian than thou' they do Christianity a vast disservice.

"Just out of curiousity, how many of you guys have ever read a book by a creation scientist?"

I've read Behe's Darwin's Black Box, I think he is more of a ID guy than Creation Science though. I think he made a really good argument, and I still can't explain all the apparent "irreducible complexity" in biology. However as a biologist, I see so much evidence every day, that I have to believe that God used the mechanism of genetic evolution to create the diversity of life we have today.

I'll take that as a no. No you haven't read any books by creation scientists. What amuses me is the certainty that evolutionists have about creation science when they know absolutely nothing about it. Would you criticize Keynesian economics without having read a single book on it?

Notal, Yes Behe is more of an ID person. Some ID people are "theistic evolutionists" or "God in the gaps" of evolution guys.

Notal: "I have to believe that God used the mechanism of genetic evolution to create the diversity of life we have today."

If you're talking about microevolution, creation science agree with you completely. The diversity within genera is totally evolution. Only when you try to get evolution to cross the gap between genera do we part paths.

"If you're talking about microevolution, creation science agree with you completely. The diversity within genera is totally evolution. Only when you try to get evolution to cross the gap between genera do we part paths."

When I was on more of the ID side I did try to draw the distinction between "micro-" and "macro-" evolution. However I really don't see that distinction holding up. That's interesting that you call anything within a genus "microevolution". Unless I'm not remembering correctly, microevolution used to be only within a specie. It's interesting that ID now has retreated to accept evolution back to a common ancestor per genus. Working in the field of biology, I have come to see the how artificial the divisions of species, genus, etc. are. Linnaeus created the basis of our current system of classification to organize life. There is constantly re-classifications, divisions, and consolidations of categories. The classifications are very useful, but they are man made distinctions, often along very intuitive lines, but man made none the less. There is no magic line to say that there is evolution within genera, but not between genera.

"I'll take that as a no. No you haven't read any books by creation scientists."

I have read lots and lots of articles by creation "scientists" -- plenty enough to now that this is "science" only in the sense that alchemy is science. For instance, geologist can easily distinguish strata laid down in a catastrophe from those laid down over time; yet creation "scientists" continue to insist that the "Great Flood" laid down most of the geological features that obviously took millions of years to lay down. Astronomers can tell that light from distant galaxies took millions of years to reach us, so creation "scientists" just make up some crap like "light traveled at a different speed in the past"!

So, fundamentalist, exactly where are the "four corners" of the earth that the Bible mentions? Have you visited them lately?

Notal: “I have come to see the how artificial the divisions of species, genus, etc.”

As far as I can remember, creation science has always accepted microevolution as creating new species. Most believe that God created just one dog, for example, possibly the wolf, and all canines have come from that one animal. The choice of genus as the limiting category is mine. Most creationists agree that the divisions are artificial and confusing and they prefer to use terms like animal types. So while evolution would have created all of the species of dogs, it couldn’t jump the gap to create a horse.

And evolutionary biology agrees with creationism to a degree in that distinction. The genetic code for the variety of species within a type of animal exists in the genetic code. All you have to do to create new species is use selective breeding. Evolutionary biology admits that to jump the gap and get to a different type of animal requires more than selective breeding, it requires beneficial mutations. Of course, harmful mutations outnumber beneficial ones a million to one, but who’s counting?

An excellent book on genetics and evolution is “Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome” John C. Sanford, former professor of genetics at Cornell.

Gene: “I have read lots and lots of articles by creation "scientists" -- plenty enough to now that this is "science" only in the sense that alchemy is science.”

You wouldn’t happen to be able to name one would you? Most creation scientists earned their PhD’s from established universities and many have taught at them for decades. John Sanford taught genetics at Cornell. Walt Brown taught at the Air Force Academy. So to claim that creation science is comparable to alchemy and at the same time claim you have read their material is just plain dishonest.

Gene: “So, fundamentalist, exactly where are the "four corners" of the earth that the Bible mentions? Have you visited them lately?”

Yes I have. Apparently you slept through literature class or you would know that writers can use allegory, simile, hyperbole, metaphor and other rhetorical devices to make a point. Of course, some people are incapable of understanding such higher and abstract forms of communication.

To talk of 'micro' versus 'macro' evolution is a hallmark of creationism/ID. In the sense it is used by that crowd, the distinction does not in fact exist. It makes about as much sense as talking about micro continental drift versus macro continental drift: 'Sure, nobody is disputing micro-drift: continental shelves may move an inch or two in a century, but to think that flat low-lands can turn into mountain ranges is silly. There is no instance in which a lake turned into a mountain, now is there?'

What creationists and ID proponents lack is a simple comprehension of time: if it takes only a few centuries for finches to diverge as much as they did on Galapagos, can you even imagine what a few million years could do??

Rothfeld: “In the sense it is used by that crowd, the distinction does not in fact exist.”

It certainly does exist and most evolutionists recognize it. In the first place, almost all evidence for evolution is of the micro type, such as the famous moth example in textbooks. Where is the evidence for transitions between animal types, such as from monkeys to humans? It’s very very limited. I suggest you read the evolutionist Roger Lewin’s book “Bones of Contention”.

The evidence for macro evolution is so sparse that many evolutionists are embarrassed by it. It prompted the birth of punctuated equilibrium, or the hopeful monster story. And it has spawned dozens of excuses in science textbooks for the small amount of data. If macro and micro evolution were the same thing, don’t you think the amount of evidence for the two would be about equal? Instead, you find overwhelming evidence for micro evolution and almost none for macro.

Evolutionists don’t like the distinction because it reveals the dishonesty in the marketing of evolution. They don’t want gullible teenagers to know that they are using the old bait-and-switch routine borrowed from con men. They want to continue to con people by using the overwhelming evidence for micro evolution as if it were evidence for the macro.

Very, very funny, fundamentalist. John Sanford retired in 1999 and only became a Young Earth Creationist in 2000. So absolutely nothing in his academic career had anything to do with this nonsense. He did some good horticulture, then became a crackpot. So what?

Walt Brown was a mechanical engineer! That is relevant how? Methinks you were trying to BS me.

Four corners of the earth: "Yes I have. Apparently you slept through literature class or you would know that writers can use allegory, simile, hyperbole, metaphor and other rhetorical devices to make a point."

Just so. Sort of like "seven days and seven nights," or "the great flood."

Evolution is simply defined as the change in allele frequencies generation to generation. How do allele frequencies change? Through random mutation and genetic drift through natural selection.

Micro evolution is commonly defined as changes intraspecies, while changes above that are considered macro evolution. But macro evolution is merely micro evolution carried through a longer period of time, and is not altogether a separate process. (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html)

Thus, speciation is macro evolution. As for "Where is the evidence for transitions between animal types, such as from monkeys to humans?" I refer you here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossilsAnd specific human transitionals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils

I'd also like to point out that you make a classic creationist fallacy when you ask for evidence of evolution "from monkeys to human". The fallacy is that humans did not evolve from monkeys, but shared a common ancestor with them.

Finally, on the subject of the supposed difference between creationism and intelligent design, may I remind you of the Dover Trials? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGC0o1yjlro

Anon: “Micro evolution is commonly defined as changes intraspecies, while changes above that are considered macro evolution.”

All creationists don’t agree on every detail, but the consensus is that micro evolution includes the creation of new species, but not new kinds of animals.

Anon: “But macro evolution is merely micro evolution carried through a longer period of time, and is not altogether a separate process.

That’s what evolutionists would like you to believe. But Gregor Mendel tried to tell Darwin that the variations possible with selective breeding were limited to the creation of new species and could not cross the gap to new kinds of animals. Much later, we learned about mutations and evolutionists decided that mutations could cause the leap across the gap to new kinds of animals even if the probability was very tiny. The difference between micro evolution and macro is the necessity for mutation in macro.

Anon: "Where is the evidence for transitions between animal types, such as from monkeys to humans?”

I didn’t say that evolutionists don’t present evidence for macro evolution, just that the evidence is very slim and most is very controversial even among evolutionists. You rarely hear about the controversies because evolutionists want to present a united front. But honest evolutionists, such as Roger Lewin in his book “Bones of Contention” will present it.

Anon: “The fallacy is that humans did not evolve from monkeys, but shared a common ancestor with them.”

That’s typical evolutionist obfuscation, which is a $2 word for dishonesty. What was the common ancestor like if not monkey-like? Was it more human than monkey? Or more monkey than human?

Anon: “Finally, on the subject of the supposed difference between creationism and intelligent design, may I remind you of the Dover Trials?

And what was the Dover trial other than a judge advertising his ignorance?